The Centre Pompidou, Visual Culture in All its Forms

The Centre Pompidou, the biggest collection of modern and contemporary art in Europe

It owns the biggest collection of modern and contemporary art in Europe, where fine art rubs shoulders with design, architecture, photography and new media.

With more than 70,000 works, the collections are presented by means of regularly changing selections.

Every year, around twenty monographic or thematic exhibitions are organised by the Centre Pompidou, which also presents a wealth of events, music, dance, theatre, performances and cinema exploring the interaction between these diverse disciplines and the visual arts.

The Centre Pompidou also invites the public to attend conference cycles, encounters and debates with a focus on the visual arts and their multi-disciplinary extensions.

A Kingdom for Children

The Centre Pompidou contains spaces specially designed for children, teenagers and families.

The Galerie des Enfants, the Atelier des Enfants and Studio 13/16 (the first space dedicated to teenagers in a major cultural institution), offer workshops and programmes stimulating awareness and facilitating artistic experience.

A mediation programme offers an introduction to contemporary creation through:

A Library Within a Museum

The Centre Pompidou also contains a public reference library (the BPI), which is free and open to all, including:

A documentary research and information centre (the Kandinsky Library) intended for modern and contemporary art history researchers; and

An acoustic/music research and coordination institute (Ircam) which annually offers a range of concerts including around twenty new works, together with an “Academy Festival” in June.

Designed by architects Renzo Piano and Richard Rogers at the heart of Paris, the Centre Pompidou opened to the public in February 1977.

Since its construction, the revolutionary building with the colourful, inside-out structure has become an icon of 20th century architecture, and remains a source of inspiration for a whole generation of architects.